The Lost Prince (29 page)

‘Be good enough to take it,’ said Marco. And he put the coin in her hand and turned into the back sitting room as if he did not see her.

The Rat and Lazarus followed him.

‘Is there so little money left?’ said Marco. ‘We have always had very little. When we had less than usual, we lived in poorer places and were hungry if it was necessary. We know how to go hungry. One does not die of it.’

The big eyes under Lazarus’ beetling brows filled with tears.

‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘one does not die of hunger. But the insult – the insult! That is not endurable.’

‘She would not have spoken if my father had been here,’ Marco said. ‘And it is true that boys like us have no money. Is there enough to pay for another week?’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered Lazarus, swallowing hard as if he had a lump in his throat, ‘perhaps enough for two – if we eat but little. If – if the Master would accept money from those who would give it, he would always have had enough. But how could such a one as he? How
could he? When he went away, he thought – he thought that –’ but there he stopped himself suddenly.

‘Never mind,’ said Marco. ‘Never mind. We will go away the day we can pay no more.’

‘I can go out and sell newspapers,’ said The Rat’s sharp voice. ‘I’ve done it before. Crutches help you to sell them. The platform would sell ’em faster still. I’ll go out on the platform.’

‘I can sell newspapers, too,’ said Marco.

Lazarus uttered an exclamation like a groan.

‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘no, no! Am I not here to go out and look for work? I can carry loads. I can run errands.’

‘We will all three begin to see what we can do,’ Marco said.

Then – exactly as had happened on the day of their return from their journey – there arose in the road outside the sound of newsboys shouting. This time the outcry seemed even more excited than before. The boys were running and yelling and there seemed more of them than usual. And above all other words was heard ‘Samavia! Samavia!’ But today The Rat did not rush to the door at the first cry. He stood still – for several seconds they all three stood still – listening. Afterwards each one remembered and told the others that he had stood still because some strange, strong feeling held him
waiting
as if to hear some great thing.

It was Lazarus who went out of the room first and The Rat and Marco followed him.

One of the upstairs lodgers had run down in haste and opened the door to buy newspapers and ask questions. The newsboys were wild with excitement and
danced about as they shouted. The piece of news they were yelling had evidently a popular quality.

The lodger bought two papers and was handing out coppers to a lad who was talking loud and fast.

‘Here’s a go!’ he was saying. ‘A Secret Party’s risen up and taken Samavia! ’Twixt night and mornin’ they done it! That there Lost Prince descendant ’as turned up, an’ they’ve
crowned
him – twixt night and mornin’ they done it! Clapt ’is crown on ’is ’ead, so’s they’d lose no time.’ And off he bolted, shouting, ‘’Cendant of Lost Prince! ’Cendant of Lost Prince made King of Samavia!’

It was then that Lazarus, forgetting even ceremony, bolted also. He bolted back to the sitting room, rushed in, and the door fell to behind him.

Marco and The Rat found it shut when, having secured a newspaper, they went down the passage. At the closed door, Marco stopped. He did not turn the handle. From the inside of the room there came the sound of big convulsive sobs and passionate Samavian words of prayer and worshipping gratitude.

‘Let us wait,’ Marco said, trembling a little. ‘He will not want anyone to see him. Let us wait.’

His black pits of eyes looked immense, and he stood at his tallest, but he was trembling slightly from head to foot. The Rat had begun to shake, as if from an ague. His face was scarcely human in its fierce unboyish emotion.

‘Marco! Marco!’ his whisper was a cry. ‘That was what he went for –
because he knew
!’

‘Yes,’ answered Marco, ‘that was what he went for.’ And his voice was unsteady, as his body was.

Presently the sobs inside the room choked themselves
back suddenly. Lazarus had remembered. They had guessed he had been leaning against the wall during his outburst. Now it was evident that he stood upright, probably shocked at the forgetfulness of his frenzy.

So Marco turned the handle of the door and went into the room. He shut the door behind him, and they all three stood together.

When the Samavian gives way to his emotions, he is emotional indeed. Lazarus looked as if a storm had swept over him. He had choked back his sobs, but tears still swept down his cheeks.

‘Sir,’ he said hoarsely, ‘your pardon! It was as if a convulsion seized me. I forgot everything – even my duty. Pardon, pardon!’ And there on the worn carpet of the dingy back sitting room in the Marylebone Road, he actually went on one knee and kissed the boy’s hand with adoration.

‘You mustn’t ask pardon,’ said Marco. ‘You have waited so long, good friend. You have given your life as my father has. You have known all the suffering a boy has not lived long enough to understand. Your big heart – your faithful heart –’ his voice broke and he stood and looked at him with an appeal which seemed to ask him to remember his boyhood and understand the rest. ‘Don’t kneel,’ he said next. ‘You mustn’t kneel.’ And Lazarus, kissing his hand again, rose to his feet.

‘Now – we shall
hear
!’ said Marco. ‘Now the waiting will soon be over.’

‘Yes, sir. Now, we shall receive commands!’ Lazarus answered.

The Rat held out the newspapers.

‘May we read them yet?’ he asked.

‘Until further orders, sir,’ said Lazarus hurriedly and apologetically – ‘until further orders, it is still better that I should read them first.’

chapter thirty

the game is at an end

So long as the history of Europe is written and read, the unparalleled story of the Rising of the Secret Party in Samavia will stand out as one of its most startling and romantic records. Every detail connected with the astonishing episode, from beginning to end, was romantic even when it was most productive of realistic results. When it is related, it always begins with the story of the tall and kingly Samavian youth who walked out of the palace in the early morning sunshine singing the herdsmen’s song of beauty of old days. Then comes the outbreak of the ruined and revolting populace; then the legend of the morning on the mountain side, and the old shepherd coming out of his cave and finding the apparently dead body of the beautiful young hunter. Then the secret nursing in the cavern; then the jolting cart piled with sheepskins crossing the frontier, and ending its journey at the barred entrance of the monastery and leaving its mysterious burden behind. And then the bitter hate and struggle of dynasties, and the handful of shepherds and herdsmen meeting in their cavern and binding themselves and their unborn sons and sons’ sons by an oath never to be broken.
Then the passing of generations and the slaughter of peoples and the changing of kings – and always that oath remembered, and the Forgers of the Sword, at their secret work, hidden in forests and caves. Then the strange story of the uncrowned kings who, wandering in other lands, lived and died in silence and seclusion, often labouring with their hands for their daily bread, but never forgetting that they must be kings, and ready – even though Samavia never called. Perhaps the whole story would fill too many volumes to admit of it ever being told fully.

But history makes the growing of the Secret Party clear – though it seems almost to cease to be history, in spite of its efforts to be brief and speak only of dull facts, when it is forced to deal with the Bearing of the Sign by two mere boys, who, being blown as unremarked as any two grains of dust across Europe, lit the Lamp whose flame so flared up to the high heavens that as if from the earth itself there sprang forth Samavians by the thousands ready to feed it – Iarovitch and Maranovitch swept aside forever and only Samavians remaining to cry aloud in ardent praise and worship of the God who had brought back to them their Lost Prince. The battle cry of his name had ended every battle. Swords fell from hands because swords were not needed. The Iarovitch fled in terror and dismay; the Maranovitch were nowhere to be found. Between night and morning, as the newsboy had said, the standard of Ivor was raised and waved from palace and citadel alike. From mountain, forest and plain, from city, village and town, its followers flocked to swear allegiance; broken and wounded legions
staggered along the roads to join and kneel to it; women and children followed, weeping with joy and chanting songs of praise. The Powers held out their sceptres to the lately prostrate and ignored country. Trainloads of food and supplies of all things needed began to cross the frontier; the aid of nations was bestowed. Samavia, at peace to till its land, to raise its flocks, to mine its ores, would be able to pay all back. Samavia in past centuries had been rich enough to make great loans, and had stored such harvests as warring countries had been glad to call upon. The story of the crowning of the King had been the wildest of all – the multitude of ecstatic people, famished, in rags, and many of them weak with wounds, kneeling at his feet, praying, as their one salvation and security, that he would go attended by them to their bombarded and broken cathedral, and at its high altar let the crown be placed upon his head, so that even those who perhaps must die of their past sufferings would at least have paid their poor homage to the King Ivor who would rule their children and bring back to Samavia her honour and her peace.

‘Ivor! Ivor!’ they chanted like a prayer – ‘Ivor! Ivor!’ in their houses, by the roadside, in the streets.

‘The story of the Coronation in the shattered Cathedral, whose roof had been torn to fragments by bombs,’ said an important London paper, ‘reads like a legend of the Middle Ages. But, upon the whole, there is in Samavia’s national character, something of the mediaeval, still.’

Lazarus, having bought and read in his top floor room every newspaper recording the details which had reached London, returned to report almost verbatim,
standing erect before Marco, the eyes under his shaggy brows sometimes flaming with exultation, sometimes filled with a rush of tears. He could not be made to sit down. His whole big body seemed to have become rigid with magnificence. Meeting Mrs Beedle in the passage, he strode by her with an air so thunderous that she turned and scuttled back to her cellar kitchen, almost falling down the stone steps in her nervous terror. In such a mood, he was not a person to face without something like awe.

In the middle of the night, The Rat suddenly spoke to Marco as if he knew that he was awake and would hear him.

‘He has given all his life to Samavia!’ he said. ‘When you travelled from country to country, and lived in holes and corners, it was because by doing it he could escape spies, and see the people who must be made to understand. No one else could have made them listen. An emperor would have begun to listen when he had seen his face and heard his voice. And he could be silent, and wait for the right time to speak. He could keep still when other men could not. He could keep his face still – and his hands – and his eyes. Now all Samavia knows what he has done, and that he has been the greatest patriot in the world. We both saw what Samavians were like that night in the cavern. They will go mad with joy when they see his face!’

‘They have seen it now,’ said Marco, in a low voice from his bed.

Then there was a long silence, though it was not quite silence because The Rat’s breathing was so quick and hard.

‘He – must have been at that coronation!’ he said at last. ‘The King – what will the King do to – repay him?’

Marco did not answer. His breathing could be heard also. His mind was picturing that same coronation – the shattered, roofless cathedral, the ruins of the ancient and magnificent high altar, the multitude of kneeling, famine-scourged people, the battle-worn, wounded and bandaged soldiery! And the King! And his father! Where had his father stood when the King was crowned? Surely, he had stood at the King’s right hand, and the people had adored and acclaimed them equally!

‘King Ivor!’ he murmured as if he were in a dream. ‘King Ivor!’

The Rat started up on his elbow.

‘You will see him,’ he cried out. ‘He’s not a dream any longer. The Game is not a game now – and it is ended – it is won! It was real –
he
was real! Marco, I don’t believe you hear.’

‘Yes, I do,’ answered Marco, ‘but it is almost more a dream than when it was one.’

‘The greatest patriot in the world is like a king himself!’ raved The Rat. ‘If there is no bigger honour to give him, he will be made a prince – and Commander-in-Chief – and Prime Minister! Can’t you hear those Samavians shouting, and singing, and praying? You’ll see it all! Do you remember the mountain climber who was going to save the shoes he made for the Bearer of the Sign? He said a great day might come when one could show them to the people. It’s come! He’ll show them! I know how they’ll take it!’ His voice suddenly dropped – as if it dropped into a pit. ‘You’ll see it all. But I shall not.’

Then Marco awoke from his dream and lifted his head. ‘Why not?’ he demanded. It sounded like a demand.

‘Because I know better than to expect it!’ The Rat groaned. ‘You’ve taken me a long way, but you can’t take me to the palace of a king. I’m not such a fool as to think that, even if your father –’

He broke off because Marco did more than lift his head. He sat upright.

‘You bore the Sign as much as I did,’ he said. ‘We bore it together.’

‘Who would have listened to
me
?’ cried The Rat. ‘
You
were the son of Stefan Loristan.’

‘You were the friend of his son,’ answered Marco. ‘You went at the command of Stefan Loristan. You were the
army
of the son of Stefan Loristan. That I have told you. Where I go, you will go. We will say no more of this – not one word.’

And he lay down again in the silence of a prince of the blood. And The Rat knew that he meant what he said, and that Stefan Loristan also would mean it. And because he was a boy, he began to wonder what Mrs Beedle would do when she heard what had happened – what had been happening all the time a tall, shabby ‘foreigner’ had lived in her dingy back sitting room, and been closely watched lest he should go away without paying his rent, as shabby foreigners sometimes did. The Rat saw himself managing to poise himself very erect on his crutches while he told her that the shabby foreigner was – well, was at least the friend of a King, and had given him his crown – and would be made a prince and a Commander-in-Chief – and a Prime
Minister – because there was no higher rank or honour to give him. And his son – whom she had insulted – was Samavia’s idol because he had borne the Sign. And also that if she were in Samavia, and Marco chose to do it he could batter her wretched lodging house to the ground and put her in a prison – ‘and serve her jolly well right!’

The next day passed, and the next; and then there came a letter. It was from Loristan, and Marco turned pale when Lazarus handed it to him. Lazarus and The Rat went out of the room at once, and left him to read it alone. It was evidently not a long letter, because it was not many minutes before Marco called them again into the room.

‘In a few days, messengers – friends of my father’s – will come to take us to Samavia. You and I and Lazarus are to go,’ he said to The Rat.

‘God be thanked!’ said Lazarus. ‘God be thanked!’

Before the messengers came, it was the end of the week. Lazarus had packed their few belongings, and on Saturday Mrs Beedle was to be seen hovering at the top of the cellar steps, when Marco and The Rat left the back sitting room to go out.

‘You needn’t glare at me!’ she said to Lazarus, who stood glowering at the door which he had opened for them. ‘Young Master Loristan, I want to know if you’ve heard when your father is coming back?’

‘He will not come back,’ said Marco.

‘He won’t, won’t he? Well, how about next week’s rent?’ said Mrs Beedle. ‘Your man’s been packing up, I notice. He’s not got much to carry away, but it won’t pass through that front door until I’ve got what’s owing
me. People that can pack easy think they can get away easy, and they’ll bear watching. The week’s up today.’

Lazarus wheeled and faced her with a furious gesture. ‘Get back to your cellar, woman,’ he commanded. ‘Get back under ground and stay there. Look at what is stopping before your miserable gate.’

A carriage was stopping – a very perfect carriage of dark brown. The coachman and footman wore dark brown and gold liveries, and the footman had leaped down and opened the door with respectful alacrity. ‘They are friends of the Master’s come to pay their respects to his son,’ said Lazarus. ‘Are their eyes to be offended by the sight of you?’

‘Your money is safe,’ said Marco. ‘You had better leave us.’

Mrs Beedle gave a sharp glance at the two gentlemen who had entered the broken gate. They were of an order which did not belong to Philibert Place. They looked as if the carriage and the dark brown and gold liveries were everyday affairs to them.

‘At all events, they’re two grown men, and not two boys without a penny,’ she said. ‘If they’re your father’s friends, they’ll tell me whether my rent’s safe or not.’

The two visitors were upon the threshold. They were both men of a certain self-contained dignity of type; and when Lazarus opened wide the door, they stepped into the shabby entrance hall as if they did not see it. They looked past its dinginess, and past Lazarus, and The Rat, and Mrs Beedle –
through
them, as it were – at Marco.

He advanced towards them at once.

‘You come from my father!’ he said, and gave his hand first to the elder man, then to the younger.

‘Yes, we come from your father. I am Baron Rastka – and this is the Count Vorversk,’ said the elder man, bowing.